Abstracts – Keynotes and Special Invited Speaker

Palle Dahlstedt (S)

Defining Spaces of Embodied Musicianship or The Joy of Playing Electronic Sounds

Can the joy of playing an acoustic instrument carry over into electronic music and sound art? What is required of musical interactions to induce the sensation of being a “musikant”, a musician who plays with his mind and body? What does it give to the listeners? Is such an embodied aesthetics a limiting factor in sound art? Or a path towards a stronger listening experience? From the perspective of my own artistic practice, I will try (but fail) to answer these questions.

The keynote will start with the performance of a new work, Libration Perturbed, composed for this occasion.

Palle Dahlstedt is a composer, Improviser, Professor in Applied IT/Computer-Aided Creativity at Chalmers University of Technology (S), and Obel Professor of Art and Technology at Aalborg University (DK). His research has since 1999 been focused on creative applications of evolutionary computation to composition, improvisation and sound design, later zooming out to study aesthetic implications of such generative algorithms, and computational models of artistic creative process. In 2012, Dahlstedt was elected member of the Young Academy of Sweden.

Carl Michael von Hausswolff (S)

Calling All Frequencies! (co-operation in the 21st century)

The need for expanded and functional systems of collaboration is demanded – not only in the music world but in the world at large. freq_out is a collaborative sound- installation that brings twelve composers/musicians/artists together to work individually and together. The installation has been set up at Moderna Museet and Stedelijk Museum as well as in the Vienna Sewers and the berlin Schlossplatz Underground.

Bio

Since the end of the 70s, von Hausswolff has worked as a composer using recording technology as his main instrument, as a visual artist using light projections, video and still photography as well as other media and as a curator of visual- and sound art.

Juliana Hodkinson (UK/DK)

Resonating objects and subjects

Including a performance of Nothing breaking the losingwith Juliana Hodkinson, Scenatet/Mina Fred, and conference delegates.

The extension of artistic practice and theoretical reflection into one another takes a physical turn in this presentation, which opens the Resonating Worlds ISACS 2017 conference. From a lecture on the artistic uses of philosophies of affect, a sonic performance comes about through a collaboration between composer, musician, listeners, delegates and solid objects. A field of resonance is rolled out in which an entanglement of relations of moving and being moved can take place, be those movements ever so small. Subtle experiences may arise in the unfolding processes of embodied interaction, in which we attune ourselves to one another through dynamic couplings that run in both directions. The actions and excitations within this dynamic tangle amplify a sociality in the conference format, and also lead us away from a focus on resonance as a purely mechanical physical phenomenon.

Luz María Sánchez (MEX)

Intermittent Space

‘Intermittent Space’ is an image coined by G. Didi-Huberman in his essay Survivance des lucioles (2009), where he proposes—in opposition to the machine totalitaire—the possibility of an interstitial and intermittent space in which [human] individual sparks subsist. Given the current state of things, it seems necessary to go back and halt on two fundamental concepts: Agamben’s state of exception and Levi’s grey zone. Through these, plus: Didi-Huberman’s construction machina versus luciole and Samuel Beckett’s image of each [of us] searching for its lost one, I propose to ponder—through the example of a transdisciplinary artistic practice and the attempt of construction of Poiesis—on how defenceless individuals endure—scintillate—in a space where unethical economical profits—through extreme violent mechanisms—have contaminated all circles of coexistence.

Sound and visual artist, Luz María Sánchez, was born in Guadalajara, Mexico where she studied both music and literature. Through her doctoral studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, she focused on the role of sound in art since its mechanical inception in the 19th century.

Working with both sound and moving images, Sánchez’s pieces are arranged to envelop the subject in a sensorial experience while preserving a feeling of physical immediacy. Her work operates in the political sphere, working with themes like the Mexican diaspora, violence in the Americas and the failure of the nation-state.

Luz María Sánchez is a San Antonio resident who splits her time between San Antonio and Mexico City.

Peter Weibel

Expanding the Electromagnetic Spectrum: Sounds of Science

Since 1000 of years we have created instruments like drums, violins, pianos to control the generation of sound. Scores are a kind of intuitive algorithm. Today we have created new instruments, from computer to smart phones, which can channel hitherto uncontrollable electromagnetic waves. Proplems and prospects of this new sounds horizon will be discussed.

Special Invited Speaker:

Spencer Topel (US)

Transient Transience: Locating Art in Sound

This paper considers distinctions between visual and sonic art practices with regards to aesthetics, technology, decorum, and materiality. Current sound art trajectories are considered in relation to historical experimental interdisciplinary art movements. I further examine these topics in recent sound and interactive works from perspectives of presenter, artist, and researcher. In particular curation of the Dartmouth Resonant Spaces quarterly fall 2017 exhibition, and the realization of installations, performance-installation hybrids, and sound synthesis research since 2014.

Spencer Topel is an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore relationships between architecture, space, and form. He is a recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Danish International Visiting Artist Residency in 2013 (DIVA), the Palmer Dixon Prize from the Juilliard School for best composition, BMI and ASCAP Awards, and was an artist-in-residence with the Meitar Ensemble in July 2014 (Tel Aviv).